Thursday, December 06, 2012

Friday: Employment Report, Consumer Sentiment

The markets are ... likely to take the number in stride because the impact from the hurricane should be temporary and ultimately turn into a positive by adding jobs in construction and other areas. "If there was ever a number that people could look past, it would be this one," said Deutsche Bank chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna.

LaVorgna's forecast is at the low end. He expects just 25,000 jobs in total were created in November ...

[W]ith all [the] layers of uncertainty, it’s hard to imagine any number that would count as a total surprise. BNP Paribas, for example, expects payroll gains of only 25,000 positions, which would be the weakest in more than two years. Economist Julia Coronado notes that her week forecast is “entirely attributable to disruptions associated with Hurricane Sandy,” which could bode well for the longer-term, as the impacts of the storm on the job market seem to be reversing quickly.

It will be possible to filter out the effects of the storm and glean what happened in the economy more broadly last month, but not until December 21. That is when the Labor Department releases state jobs numbers; a data set that is often overlooked, it will be parsed to filter out the effect of job losses in New Jersey, New York, and other affected places.

Irwin makes a good point; the state level data will be especially useful this month.

Friday economic releases:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the BLS will release the Employment Report for November. The consensus is for an increase of 80,000 non-farm payroll jobs in November; there were 171,000 jobs added in October. The impact from Hurricane Sandy will show up in the November report. The consensus is for the unemployment rate to increase to 8.0% in November, up from 7.9% in October.

• At 9:55 AM, the Reuter's/University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (preliminary for December) will be released. The consensus is for sentiment to increase slightly to 83.0.

• At 3:00 PM, the Consumer Credit for October will be released. The consensus is for credit to increase $10.0 billion.